The Woken Gods (28 page)

I so wish I had an extra set of hands, and that they belonged to a nurse. Also, some food. I’m lightheaded, but it might be from the situation. I visualize his giant fangs. Immediately, my capacity to be careful and alert revives.

“You’re going to have to help me out.” I scoot around to Anzu’s front, so he can see where I am every stage along the way. I hold the T-shirt at his lips. “Will you maybe chew this instead of my head off? I’m going to get you all fixed up… but I need my head. I have to get back to the city. Even if I probably can’t fix what’s going on there.”

His golden gaze takes my measure and seems to find me lacking in every way. I’m a thousand years shy – at best – of anyone this guy can take seriously. But then Anzu’s jaws lever open. I push the T-shirt in before I can wuss out. He bites down, shredding the fabric in one chomp.

My hand hovers over the wound, and Anzu tenses beneath me. “Easy,” I say.

I reach into the blood and grab for the shard. It slips through my fingers. A louder rumble.

“One more try.” I wipe my hands on my jeans, smearing blood everywhere, and find the tiny bit of bone peeking up. I imagine my fingers closing around it, lifting it out. The alley drops away. Anzu falls with it. I see only that shard I have to get out…

When I’m certain I could do this with my eyes closed, that I’ve memorized its precise location, I reach in…

And I get it.

I start to cheer, but Anzu’s growl mutes my triumph. He stumbles and rumbles onto his feet, tossing the T-shirt to one side.

While he’s doing that, I examine the shard. Big. As long as my hand, narrow and sharp. I wipe it on my dirty jeans and stick it into the top of my backpack before Anzu can demand it, the way people keep their appendix or gall bladder or some other gross part they had removed. It’s my battle scar as much as his.

I’m pretty sure I just collected my first relic, though I have no idea what it does. Except make this Sumerian god far weaker than he should be.

Anzu is on his back two feet, casting a long shadow over me. His wings test the air. He’s looking stronger already.

“Don’t suppose you can do that handy teleporting trick like our not-friend Legba?” I ask. “I kid. You can fly instead, so who needs teleportation?” I hesitate. “If you could stay back here until I get a coach, I’d consider it a favor. See you around.”

I tell myself that holier-than-thou (really) molten gold gaze is agreement. Fully aware of what a scary mess I must be, I still can’t risk changing clothes and trying to clean off in front of him. Recovering animals are hungry ones. He has to be at least a million times more starving than me. Making do, I wipe the worst of the gore on my jeans off with the destroyed-forever T-shirt, put on my leather jacket, and smooth a hand through my hair. I shoulder my pack, and head out to the street without a longer goodbye.

The waitress from the night before nearly crashes into me, heading toward the church as I emerge from the alley. Across the street,
Hell & Co
is dark. She wears a long blue and white robe that shows off her cross tattoo.

She doubletakes. “Figured you’d be gone by now. You had the look of someone passing through.”

“And I didn’t figure you were part of this sect,” I counter. “Guess we were both off.”

She shrugs. That’s clearly my issue, not hers. I ask, “What do you guys believe in, anyway?”

“That the apocalypse has already begun,” she says, without hesitation. “But we behave as though it hasn’t. Like every action matters.”

“What’s the difference?”

“You’ll see someday,” she says. “Everyone will.”

“Right.” They may not be far wrong. Someday may not be a luxury we get. I hope she’s right about our actions mattering, though.

“Good luck,” she says, and finishes her trip into the church. She stops at the door and peeks back at me.

It’s my turn to shrug. “I’ll need it,” I call, and continue on. My destination, the ticket booth, is open… but the only carriage in front of it is another long distance one like I missed last night. Those go out from here, not into the city.

I keep my head down as I approach. The minute I look up, the guy inside starts shaking his head. The squarish beard he sports is familiar. Which means he was here last night.

“No thanks,” he says. “We have the right to decline dangerous passengers.”

I pull out the hundred, press it to the glass that separates us. “I just want to get back into the city. Please? You can have the extra.”

He doesn’t relent. In fact, he leans to the barred mouthpiece and says, “Not enough money in Alexandria. Besides, no coaches for five hours. It’s Saturday.”

“But it’s solstice,” I say. If there’s a coach, maybe I can deal with its driver directly.

“Right, one coach going in tonight because of that. Usually none. But no. Way.”

He yanks down the shade fixed to the inside of the glass, the word CLOSED printed on it. I bang my head gently against the window. Then I slide down the side of the booth to the ground. I pull up my knees and rest my head on my arms. My hair falls in front of my face.

I don’t care who sees me sitting here, defeated. Gore girl, they’ll call me in the broadsheets.

Though it’s not likely they’ll call me anything. No one talks about screwups that don’t even make it to the same city as the showdown.

Bronson will do it. Kill my father, open the door, bring back his Gabrielle, and expect me to live with them, happily. If Mom’s with them, if they get her mother to lure her, I might have to agree. While Dad’s gone forever. I will spend every day of the future with the knowledge
I
was the one supposed to stop it. And that I didn’t manage to.

The sound that reaches me first is people shouting warnings, “Go inside!” “Don’t look at him!” But there are only a few. Alexandria sleeps in. It’s not enough voices to give me reason to look up.

Then comes the roar – Anzu’s maximum volume one. Nearby.

I raise my head and spot him right away.

In the middle of the street, Anzu shakes out his mane and his feathers, for all the world like a dog shaking off nerves or water. His gold gaze makes me want to flee him. But I can’t quite move. He cranes his head back to the sky and roars again and again.

A sudden strong breeze whips my hair around my face. I climb to my feet. Storm clouds gather above us.

Anzu roars once more and the winds pick up strength. The storm clouds churn, thicker and darker. No rain falls.

“Nice meeting you,” I say into the mouthpiece to the guy in the ticket booth. He’s raised the shade so he can take in the show. “By which I mean the opposite.”

Because I am almost certain Anzu is arranging us a ride. I had forgotten he’s a storm god.

I walk into the street, but stop before I quite reach him – I’m afraid I’ve gotten it wrong.

Finally, he lowers his head and gives me a long, flat look. Then he turns his back to me. He has to be bending his monster’s legs, I think, so I can reach.

Advancing slowly, I raise my arms above the feathers and begin to stretch them around the knotted mane at his neck. I give him time to pull away, if this isn’t what he meant for me to do. But as soon as my hands are mostly around him, his wings beat twice and the winds grab hold of us as we rise. I get a better hold on his fur just as my feet leave the ground.

I cling tight as we sail on rough currents, through loud thunder and bright lightning, heading toward D.C.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Anzu doesn’t smell like a bird or a lion – not that I know what either of them smell like up close and personal – but instead a combination of non-human scents. Like the wet ash of a fireplace drenched in rain, a hint of stone beneath. Ancient and scary, in other words. The dried blood on my shirt is reminiscent of crumbled earth.

When we get close I realize that “city” is not a specific enough destination. He might fly us to the Houses, straight to the top of Enki’s ziggurat. That’s someplace I do not want to try to navigate on my own. Someplace I’m sure Society operatives would capture me – though not before Anzu injures (or worse) a few of them. My quarrel is with my grandfather, so far as I know. Not the rest.

Though at least one of them has a reason to quarrel with me. Oz.

But I probably
won’t
have to face him. My hope is that he’s on lockdown for a few days, a hand slap but nothing too much worse than that. Bronson might be bastard enough to risk the world for his feelings, but surely he wouldn’t imprison his ward. Not for assisting me. I’m still his granddaughter. As he so kindly reminded me while taking back the relic and confirming his plans to execute my father.

“Oracle Circle,” I shout over the wind, when the buildings start getting familiar. “I need to go to Oracle Circle.”

We’re on the outskirts of Georgetown. I concentrate on an image of the market, pushing it out on the off chance he can pick up the signal if I broadcast it at him. I’m still unsure how much of what I say he comprehends.

I breathe somewhat easier as he adjusts the angle of approach. The Circle isn’t far from the Houses, but we’re no longer headed
toward
them. The tall trees that cover the market come into view, and Anzu angles lower. We are about to make a very unsubtle arrival – but it’s too late to do anything about that.

I brace for a jolt during the landing, but he swoops down and his wings lower us gently… right in the middle of the sidewalk. The old metro stop entrance is in front of us, the granite bowl around the top engraved with a poem. I see the words “sweet and sad,” and they might be written for me. I made it back into the city, but defeated and alone. Now I have to face my mother and break bad news to her. I can’t imagine she’ll take it well. Not from me.

Tourists and townies alike surround us to
ooh
and
ah
at Anzu. Camera shutters go off
click click click
. Do these people not stop to consider that this is a
god
and that he
might
be hungry and recovering from a wound? OK, probably not. I tense and wait for him to unleash a roar at them, if not something worse.

He only shrugs his feathered shoulders. When I hang on, he does it again.

I get the hint, and hop down to the concrete. As soon as he’s free of my weight, he launches back into the air and settles into a lazy orbit high overhead.

That leaves the onlookers focused on me. “Who are you?” “How did you win his favor?” “Are you alright?” “She doesn’t
look
alright.” The barrage of questions and attention is the last thing I need. Putting my hand up to block the cameras, I inform them, “I’m no one. Promise,” and stride as quickly as I can toward the market. Some follow, but most are too easily distracted. Hitting the maze of stalls, I wind through them in a pattern designed to lose anyone not familiar with the intricacies.

When I come out on the side where the street we found Mom is, I stop to verify my success. I definitely don’t want to lead anyone else to her door. But no one is paying any notice to me. A glance into the sky tells me Anzu remains up there. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he doesn’t need food at all. A disturbing thought.

How little we still know about the gods is amazing, really. But it’s not as if they’ll hold still for taxonomy and lab work or hand someone a book that says Secrets of Divinity Within.

Besides the fact no one’s tailing me, there is one other piece of welcome news. The line of creepy oracles must be hard at work, because no doors open or curtains pull back as I head up the street. Mom’s red door is ahead. The closer I get, the more I dread this. We finally had a semi-calm moment together, if under terrible circumstances. Other than that, the only way I’ve seen her in years is upset. My visit is going to make her that, at a minimum.

I raise my hand, figuring my knuckles won’t make it to the wood. That she’ll open the door again, sensing me outside. But that doesn’t happen.

So I knock.

Nothing.

I knock again.

Finally, I test the knob. It slides in my palm, the door easing open. That same darkness from the other day waits within.

“Mom? It’s me. Mom, you here?” I call as I go inside.

I hurry through the black of the hallway. No light glows at the end this time. The whole house is dark, and I determine as quickly as I can without light – fumbling at the wall switches does nothing, the power’s out – that she isn’t here. No one is. What’s more, the house
feels
empty. For no reason I can quite explain I begin to suspect that she has left, not that recently, and that she never intends to return. The house has an air of utter abandonment.

But where would she go? Another oracle flophouse
or
Bronson could have her already… I should check the market again to be sure she’s not working. My instincts haven’t been so accurate lately. I rush back out and, after a moment’s internal debate, decide to lock the door behind me. Surely Mom has a key if she
does
plan to come back. This will keep would-be squatters away in case.

I turn and stare straight at Oz.

He’s about ten feet away, and he’s seen me too. No doubt about that. I can’t read anything in his face. He’s in his full uniform, and so is Justin, behind him. They’re probably on assignment to bring me in, like they were the day I met them. I do the first thing that occurs to me – I take off in the opposite direction.

“Kyra!” he shouts. “Stop!”

I check over my shoulder. He’s chasing me, and that spurs me faster. This is
not
good. It also probably means Bronson
doesn’t
have Mom, and so she could be anywhere. I dart into an alley, intending to make my way back to the market after I’ve lost them. Mom doesn’t know Legba’s against her and with the prophecy about Dad… I can’t risk missing her because I didn’t look hard enough.

Anzu gives no sign of a plan to dive down and rescue me. He stays high overhead.

“
Now
he decides to keep his distance,” I mutter, hooking into another alley, and then toward the Circle. I’ll go to the stall the fake fire hands woman was in, the one who told me where Mom was last time. She might be able to guide me to her again.